Evidence of meeting #14 for Canadian Heritage in the 45th Parliament, 1st session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was pieces.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Conservative
Jamie Schmale Conservative Haliburton—Kawartha Lakes, ON
You can talk about the 900 pieces. You can talk about the number as $50,000. The entire collection is worth $14 million. Regardless of what the number is, there are pieces missing, worth money, worth value to people who created that art. This doesn't happen in the National Gallery, as was pointed out by the Bloc before me.
Who has been held accountable? Has anybody?
Deputy Minister, Department of Crown-Indigenous Relations and Northern Affairs
Just to correct that, the pieces have not been identified as missing. They have been identified as unaccounted for.
Conservative
Deputy Minister, Department of Crown-Indigenous Relations and Northern Affairs
No, no one has been fired.
Conservative
Deputy Minister, Department of Crown-Indigenous Relations and Northern Affairs
No one has been suspended.
Conservative
Jamie Schmale Conservative Haliburton—Kawartha Lakes, ON
Has anybody maybe been told to come in the office five days a week as the ultimate penance?
Deputy Minister, Department of Crown-Indigenous Relations and Northern Affairs
I think the purpose of an internal audit, and the reason we do risk-based audit, is to proactively identify areas of risk so that management can put in place actions to remedy those risks.
Conservative
Jamie Schmale Conservative Haliburton—Kawartha Lakes, ON
Okay.
This would not happen in the National Gallery. Just to say that some pieces have gone missing and it's okay.... Why has nobody been held accountable?
Deputy Minister, Department of Crown-Indigenous Relations and Northern Affairs
Again, the origin of the collection was decades ago. The purpose of that collection was not to set up a national gallery; it was to set up—
Conservative
Jamie Schmale Conservative Haliburton—Kawartha Lakes, ON
You're storing these pieces. You take responsibility for these pieces.
Deputy Minister, Department of Crown-Indigenous Relations and Northern Affairs
This is why we have changed the way the art has been managed. We have suspended the internal loan program that was the source of why 91 of these pieces became unaccounted for.
Conservative
Jamie Schmale Conservative Haliburton—Kawartha Lakes, ON
This went on for decades, as was pointed out. The minister talked about the 1980s. You got the IAC in the 1990s. This has gone on for decades. We have missing pieces. Nobody is being held accountable by their current, past.... When are we going to see somebody take accountability and say, “Yeah, this was my fault. This should have been better”? I know you're putting in processes—I get it.
We have a storage container by a third party here. Was there even a contract with that provider?
Deputy Minister, Department of Crown-Indigenous Relations and Northern Affairs
Only 8% of the artworks are in that third party storage. We have repatriated almost all of the artworks now in our vault, including all the pieces that were still held in regional offices.
Conservative
Jamie Schmale Conservative Haliburton—Kawartha Lakes, ON
Would you have done that if it had not been for the audit?
Deputy Minister, Department of Crown-Indigenous Relations and Northern Affairs
We were already doing that before the audit.
Conservative
Deputy Minister, Department of Crown-Indigenous Relations and Northern Affairs
We have been doing that for years.
November 19th, 2025 / 5:05 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Lisa Hepfner
Thank you, Mr. Schmale. Your time is up.
Ms. Royer, you have five minutes.
Liberal
Zoe Royer Liberal Port Moody—Coquitlam, BC
Thank you very much, Madam Chair.
Thank you to our witnesses here today.
From what I understand, a majority of the art pieces mentioned were loaned to government offices in the 1980s, and the loan program has been cancelled. Given that, at that time, a lot of the documentation of the pieces was by pen and paper—it wasn't digitized or computerized—I would imagine that some of that documentation is missing, hence the difficulty in finding the pieces.
Recognizing that Canada's history from that time.... We still had residential schools operating in the 1980s, and that is a shameful part of our history. I mean, it's hard to put myself into the position of those working at that time. It was not computerized, and there was a different level of understanding and respect. This wasn't a lapse in security. It was really about old systems and that different...that non-recognition of First Peoples, which is truly sad.
I also understand that measures have been put in place today to make sure that this never happens. Can you talk a bit about how the department—and maybe this is a question for you, Valerie—today is ensuring that indigenous protocols, spiritual care and community input guide the preservation and exhibition of sacred or culturally sensitive works?
Deputy Minister, Department of Crown-Indigenous Relations and Northern Affairs
Thank you so much for the question. I would say to you that I think we can do more. There's a lot of engagement with indigenous artists with respect to the collection and their own art within the collection, but I really think that, in the area of governance—from the question that was raised earlier—there is more we could do.
For example, we are working on a public catalogue of all the artwork that people could browse through. We published, just before the pandemic, The Indigenous Art Collection: Selected Works 1967-2017, a beautiful book that you can go through and actually see all of the artwork. However, I think that, still, we could do more for the visibility of the collection.
We've had a gallery space in our permanent facility at 10 Wellington, which, of course, we've now had to temporarily move out of because they are refurbishing the exterior of that building. That gallery itself, when we reopen it, is one area where we can do exhibitions. We have a really robust external loan program, which is also very helpful. We also engage indigenous artists and curators to do workshops and special events. We've had several success stories that we can speak to. We've done partnerships, also, with other museums and galleries in that context.
However, as I was mentioning earlier, I think that, ultimately, an indigenous-led approach to the governance of the collection would be more ideal than my speaking to you, here, as the representative person responsible for the management of the collection today.
Liberal
Zoe Royer Liberal Port Moody—Coquitlam, BC
I really appreciate that. I think it is very important to the Canadian people how we move forward in this.
Thinking about the cataloguing.... You raised an important point, that that's what you're doing now, and I'm sure that it's being done, but in the record-keeping of the works, regardless of whom they were loaned to at different times, whether they were properly identified may also be called into question. If you can't properly identify a piece and if you don't have the technologies or the ways in which we would assess works today, I imagine that would contribute to the difficulty in finding these works.
Can you just assure us again...? Actually, I'll shift a little bit, because I'm running out of time.
Liberal
Zoe Royer Liberal Port Moody—Coquitlam, BC
Maybe when we come back, you could talk about the life-cycle funding, how that's being managed and what's required to complete the baseline costs and things like that.
Thank you.
Liberal